I have bought a 2 year old jaguar iPace to replace my 9 year old diesel 115k mileage Jaguar XF.
I love Jaguars.
I have finally gone electric with my new car
by 57 Comments
Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Musings on the byways of popular culture
The performance is amazing and it is so quiet.
I should get 240-250 range off a full charge so it is practical as well.
I was always doubtful about going electric but so far so good.
Using a three pin plug charger overnight will get a 25% charge and as I only currently use it to take the kids to school it is good. A Christmas trip of 180 miles to see the parents in the next few weeks will be the first challenge.
I just bought a one year old Skoda Kamiq. I don’t really care about cars but it is very nice.
I’ve been an EV owner for over 3 years now. I started with the tried & tested Renault Zoe and now have a Renault Megane E-Tech which is a lovely car. I am well over all of the initial concerns about range & charge-points. Last night, I travelled about 170 miles using 90% charge for my trip from Dumfries to Glasgow to The Unthanks gig (excellent!). Even in the last couple of years, there has been tremendous technical progress in all matters EV. There are now new charging hubs being introduced regularly. Last year, I drove from Inverness to the Arctic Convoy Museum in the North West Highlands. I was surprised to locate a rapid charge unit in the nearby village of Gairloch. You might be interested to check out the Fully Charged website which has loads of EV revues and info. It was started by Red Dwarf’s Robert Llewellyn about 10 years ago. He’s been an EV fan for many years.
We holidayed in Coigach a few years ago and I was amazed at how many charge points were already in evidence for somewhere so remote. Didn’t know about the Arctic Convoy Museum, looks interesting – although I doubt the rest of my family would have been as enthusiastic.
My interest in the Arctic Convoy Museum arose from the fact that my father served on HMS Lapwing which was torpedoed and sunk off Murmansk in March 1945 whilst on convoy duty. My dad was one of the 61 rescued but 158 sailors perished. I went to the museum with some artefacts which I thought might interest the museum. It was quite an emotional visit as I found out a lot of facts which dad had never discussed. The convoys used to muster in nearby Loch Ewe.
On our summer trip round the NC500 route, we went past the Arctic Convoy Museum because of lack of time, but we did stop for a walk along the beach at Gairloch, and lunch in the museum cafe.
Gairloch museum is fab. Really interesting exhibits, a fantastic cafe, and the best toilets on the whole NC500 route. I very nearly joined up for a year, until I remembered I live 600 miles away.
The Gairloch / Poolewe area is my favourite part of Scotland. Spent many a holiday there as a kid and also as an old git, I could happily live there permanently.
Yeah, it is definitely on the list of places to stop a while longer. Campervan ownership and semi-retirement is two years away, but it can’t come soon enough.
Some of the East coast is fab, too. I can see why Edwyn Collins likes Helmsdale so much.
I would highly recommend Sands campsite at Gairloch when you have your van. Lovely restaurant and bar onsite too.
That’s on the list of places to stop next time. We only had a week to do the whole route, and went from Laide to Applecross in one day which, speaking as the driver, was too bloody far!
When I do replace my current vehicle, I’m drawn towards the hybrid option.
Just hoping that there’s more to choose from than a glut of SUVs
I like Vauxhalls …
I don’t see hybrids as a worthwhile choice. A fudge.
If I could afford to change my car, I’d go fully electric. As it is, my petrol-drinking geriatric Saab will do until it’s time to give up driving completely.
For me a Hybrid would make sense. Like most people 90% of my trips are less than 20 miles. So the gasoline power would be needed only for longer trips. Probably less than 6 a year. I go to Toronto faulty often (400km), but lately am preferring the train. Hate driving in wintry and dark conditions which will be the norm for the next 5 months
However I live in a private condominium estate of town houses and we don’t currently have any charging capabilities on site. I raised it at the last AGM, but nothing has happened until now.
Do you get fixed when you go to Toronto faulty?
I also live in a block on an estate with no charging facilities and no likelihood of them coming in my lifetime. Could not charge an EV at home.
Don’t have my own private petrol pump either, but there are plenty of places nearby to charge an EV.
The supermarket where I currently go for petrol has oodles of recently-installed charging points in it’s car park, though they ought to have roofed them over with solar panels, IMO.
Our Hybrid Toyota is ideal for me and my wife – runs off battery 90% of the time round the local area where everything is 20mph, but runs on petrol for the long journeys down to my dad. Like others here, the main issue is with charging on my South London street. There’s also affordability. My 7-year old small car is sturdy and does all I want it to do.
We run two cars – a practical Honda Jazz and a Mazda MX5. Neither do much mileage so petrol costs aren’t really a big issue, but we have had solar panels for years, so an EV next time makes total sense as we brew our own leccy.
I’m wavering over EVs, partly because Mrs thep mutters about slavery in Central Africa every time the subject comes up, and partly because charging stations are thin on the ground in NSW once you leave the coast. And mainly because we don’t have the money right now. But we don’t leave the coast all that often, and we have full solar so home charging would definitely be the go in due course. In the meantime I’m happy with the Skoda Octavia.
Speaking as an Electronics bod, I think Mrs thep has a point. The stuff in car batteries, well in any rechargeable battery, is horrid. And it only comes out of the ground in places like the Congo, where employment practices are not nice. There’s little analysis of the long-term environmental impact of digging it up, because Lithium Ion batteries have only been around for a couple of decades.
My professional gut feeling is Li Ion battery power is a technological step in the right direction, but not the final destination.
We used a Volvo electric car last December when visiting my son.
My exact words were ” we are not doing that again”
I’m currently debating on EV’s
Here in Singapore, we have to purchase a “Certificate of Entitlement” before you can buy a car, which is a system to control the number of cars on the road (and is ridiculously expensive – its limited and bid for each month). This lasts for 10 years after which you either scrap the car or you can extend the certificate for 5 or 10 years (but this comes with an increase in road tax).
My current car will be 10 years old next April. I want to go EV, but I don’t think the infrastructure is quite there yet – we live in an apartment so can’t plug it in at home and there are not yet chargers installed in our car park (its promised). There are plenty of chargers at petrol stations, shopping mall car parks etc, but I don’t really want to hang out at a petrol station whilst it charges.
So, come April, I will probably have to extend the certificate to bide me over for a few more years.
Having said that, I still think that hydrogen fuel cells are the answer, but with all the infrastructure being put in for electric, this may now be a none starter.
My advice – don’t get a car that’s a non starter. You’re just asking for trouble. 🙂
Hydrogen fuel cell technology is being promoted quite a bit lately. Certainly a lot better than burning petrol, biofuel or diesel.
Currently the most common and cleanest method of producing hydrogen is electrolysis of water using electricity. Might as well just use the electricity, I think.
The other main method for creating hydrogen, from heating up biomass, also creates a lot of carbon monoxide, which then needs to be dealt with.
Hydrogen fuel cells have a better range. I think you’ll see hydrogen stations for commercial vehicles because electric vans are currently ok for local deliveries but hopeless for any significant distance.
Yes. I’ve read that the purely-electric truck is currently not a practical proposition due to it’s poor range. Hydrogen as a stopgap would be good.
Improved solar panel tech should be the next innovation to concentrate on (after greener batteries). Artic trailers with roofs that are all- high-efficiency solar panel would be useful.
This pantograph tech for the latest urban buses could easily transfer to trucking.
I think VW claim 160 miles for their electric Crafter, short wheel base but anecdotally, 100 miles is more like it. Smaller vans fare better obviously but there are a lot of LWB Sprinters/Transits etc out there doing long journeys.
I used to do about 10,000 miles a year in my Renault Trafic work van (diesel) before retirement. Short hops in and around north and west London.
160 miles on a charge just doesn’t really cut it.
I went to a schools outreach thing at the Cavendish Labs (Cambridge university Physics department) in September. I was presenting, not attending.
One of the research teams there has come up with something you can paint onto glass (it is transparent) and attach electrodes. The prototype is as efficient at turning sunlight into leccy as a silicon-based solar panel is now, so there’s a lot of hope for it. The trouble is that it currently wears out after a year or two, as it is, much like me, not UV-proof.
For hybrids, dont forget that petrol loses its potency after a while.
“Generally speaking, petrol has a shelf-life of six months if stored in a sealed container at 20 degrees – or just three months if kept at 30 degrees. The more it’s exposed to heat, the more quickly it will go off.”
Source: RAC
Having spent most of my life working in places where driving was either a risky (Saudi, Kenya, Vietnam) or ruinously expensive undertaking (Hong Kong, Dubai), only learned to drive when I came back to Ireland 10 years ago.
As developed a very heavy foot when changing gears in my manual petrol powered 2018 Nissan Qashqai am currently considering part exchanging for a newer used hybrid model with an automatic transmission.
Amazing how fast cars have advanced in the six years since I bought the Qashqai I’m planning on trading in
We have a Hyundai (bless you) hybrid, which cost as much as my first house. It was bought as a fudge to principles and projected expectations, when it became too expensive to service its elderly predecessor. Nice enough car but no feckin cd player, of course.
Bit pissed off about that myself as trips now require loading CDs onto the computer and forwarding on to the phone to play while driving. Not especially.safe for someone of my advancing years and limited luddite-like appetite for change
On the plus side, the makers also got rid of that jobsworth with the flag who used to have to walk ahead of you every time you set out for the shops
Oh come on chaps, I would be surprised if both of your cars didn’t have SD card slots tucked away somewhere, eg glove compartment. 2018 Qashqai certainly does. I have one in my Skoda which contains hours and hours and hours of what my daughter witheringly describes as Dad music, playable through the touch screen. Unless you’ve done a major audio upgrade the quality will be fine.
I stuck my entire iTunes library onto a memory stick and plugged it into the car and it works great. No playlists but all the albums are there, styles etc. I can also access my phone and use Spotify, Musicolet, PodcastAddict etc. Brilliant.
My work van before the final one had a USB socket in the dash, that played music from a memory stick. The one that replaced it didn’t, sadly, but it did have bluetooth.
I man never remember to fill the memory stick!
And I can stream.
To be fair, my issue is that most of the albums I listen to have yet to be released and so have yet to be on any streaming platform.
I can also stream…but that may be the tamsulosin…
(boom-tish!)
But you can rip them to a card or a stick, can’t you?
We got a Leaf 4 years ago when we arrived in Ireland. Not the best range but it does school runs and bits and pieces locally so it’s perfect. We picked up a Hyundai Santa Fe plug in hybrid back in 2022. It’s also perfect for what we use it for which is mostly longer trips including on the ferry back to the UK 3-4 times a year. We’ve owned several SUVs over the years and this is by far our favourite. You can get about 50km on the battery alone and in hybrid mode it can do 40mpg which is pretty good considering how big it is.
We have a Toyota Yaris Cross, self charging petrol hybrid. I said the other day that we could have probably gone all electric, we may yet.
Our friends bought a Toyota hybrid last year (not the Yaris, a Corolla I think)….and I find it a bit irritating when we are in it! I kept thinking there was an ambulance or someting in the distance – it makes really odd noises. No one else seemed in the slightest bit bothered, so it is obviously me, but they were certainly there, presumably as the electric motors were spinning up.
Down here – Oz , hybrids outsell pure electric big time. A very big empty country. Not a big charging infrastructure so unless you are a city dweller the electrics are a bit iffy.
Debates about exploiting lesser developed countries is always tricky. Are they better off by people not buying their export products even if the actual workers get a pittance? A pittance is more than nothing.
We’re now into our 8th year of running an electric car, and I would never want to go back. We realistically only have to charge it about once every 10 days and thanks to battery storage in the cellar, the energy our solar panels produce during the day can charge the car and/or supply the house anytime.
Our other car is a plug-in hybrid, which does the daily commute just on battery power but can also do longer (>220 mile) journeys when necessary.
Hydrogen fuel cells are definitely the future, but for now, electric power is the right call for us.
Congrats Uncle W. Similarly last week we got our first EV, replacing a diesel 2011 Citroen Picasso with 170k km on it for a VW ID.Buzz. The Picasso was becoming very tetchy due its particulate filter. The other car that was in serious contention was a second-hand Skoda Enyak 80 which offered great range (550km!) and was very pleasant to drive. There were discussions about range, vs function. Incredibly for its size, the Buzz is not a seven-seater, but we’re a family of five so that’s fine. The rear seating is ridiculously spacious and comfortable The dealer made us an offer we couldn’t refuse on a 2024 ex-demo model. It’s ridiculously large but also ridiculously fun. Range is 360km, but I notice other Irish people on this thread, and Ireland is not that big – if I drove due west, south or North from Dublin for 360km, I’d end up in the sea.
After a week, I’m a total EV convert. Test-driving cars for the last few weeks, it was a quantum leap to see what’s out there, versus my 2011 Citroen. The last decade has seen cars become software-on-wheels, they are very different now. Anything I tried seemed great! This morning my wife was able to get into the car at 8am with everything having been set up to be defrosted and warmed beforehand. This is a huge novelty.
We don’t have a home charger yet but will need to get one – we have off-street parking at home which obviously helps a lot. Charged it for 12 hours off a domestic plug and got 33% of the battery charged. Manageable in the short term.
Yeah, no CD player, but the car is online (somehow?) and I can stream my favourite online radio stations. Swings and roundabouts. Two of the USB-C charging ports are data ports so I could just connect a drive of everything if I wanted to.
PS Have you seen the next generation of Jaguar?
https://www.jaguar.com/copy-nothing/jaguar-type-00.html
@DrJ
Know Jag sales have been in freefall these last few years – down to something like 50,000 a year, but hard to see the logic here – it’s like something a badass pimp in a 70s blaxploitation movie might drive.
While the head honchos at Jaguar obviously don’t give a fuck about the traditional petrolhead who were the brand’s bread and butter, it’s hard to see younger, more eco- and socially aware drivers driving something this ostentatious and charmless
It made it onto Radio 4 this morning, but it is just a concept car to show off at exhibitions, not an actual product for sale.
Something so utterly impractical did well to make it into the news, given that today is also the Turner Prize awards.
Jaguar’s brand was already severely damaged by
a) producing estate cars (station wagons).
b) producing diesel cars.
c) producing SUVs.
IMO.
The logic totally makes sense – the brand was dieing on its feet with lacklustre sales and a changing car landscape. Not exactly a ‘luxury’ brand and not quite a volume producer, they fall between too many stools.
That ‘teaser’ ad got everyone talking about Jaguar, whilst another film sequence of a car driving through the alps with the top down would have been ignored. Jaguar/Land Rover have been very successful with those bloody Chelsea tractors which provide the volume, so Jaguar can now move really upmarket. I can easily imagine the rich and famous buying that new thing.
I’ve just been in China where buying EVs are now the norm, not the exception. Nobody is buying new petrol cars – the resale value is terrible. Legacy petrol car dealerships are tumbleweed. Charging stations are everywhere, even in the remote mountain areas I was exploring near the Burma border. But they’re already moving beyond this to having interchangeable car batteries – so you can drive 300km and simply drive into a EV station and swap out for a new charged battery, no need to wait while recharging.
Are “Cars” Electric?
It’s complex.
I can’t believe we’ve had over 50 comments before someone said this, but here goes anyway:
JUDAS!!
Well played sir
VVG
Rev Fucking LOUD!
(I don’t think that works so well with an electric car)
Went to Nissan for a pre-sale/trade-in full service on Tuesday and got offered a fabulous deal on a never-driven 2024 display model E-power Qashqai which the sales guy delivered to our door yesterday evening.